http://foodwatch.com.au/expert-advice-fats-and-oils/butter-vs-margarine-which-is-best.html
This article is not scientific research although it contains some useful information particularly the update since the 1990s in the process for making margarine.
It does ‘beg’ a lot of issues that deserve much further discussion including thorough examination of the research evidence:
[ul]
[li]about cholesterol[/li]
[li]about saturated and polyunsaturated fats[/li]
[li]about vegetable oils vs animal fats[/li]
[li]about salt[/li]
[/ul]
Personally I don’t accept the Heart Foundation as an authority on nutrition. They have given some advice over the years about food pyramids that we are now suffering the consequences from.
Also I always question the simplistic rejection of salt. Certainly many processed foods are high in salt and if our diet is mainly processed foods we will be getting more salt than is good for us. But a diet of home-cooked unprocessed foods won’t overload us with salt. In fact if we don’t add salt we can easily develop problems from insufficient salt as I did when I went entirely off salt on the doctor’s advice when pregnant. After 20 years off salt a light turned on and I started having salt again and a lot of my health problems reduced sharply. Also salt always was the population’s main source of essential iodine. It is salutatory to read the research literature on salt – reads like a detective story and for me salt wins out as the goodie.
The link to the article says nothing about the Omega-6: Omega-3 ratio of fats that is so important. The vegetable oils load up our Omega-6 a long way beyond what it should be. Then we are endlessly sold fish oils to try to balance the ratio with more Omega-3 but we were never designed to get to a good ratio by over-doing the Omega-3. It is the Omega-6 in the vegetable oils we need to cut down on to get the ratio back to the right level. (A lot of maths but maths is how we are able to understand some important stuff.)
Then there is the continuous anti-cholesterol press and that surely does sell a lot of cholesterol medications. We are told high LDL cholesterol is bad for our hearts but low cholesterol is linked to higher cancer risk. This is not a simple equation.